---
title: “It is surest to ride thither along the shore.” — The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North · tree and pragmatics
description: “It is surest to ride thither along the shore.” A sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Weeping Ship, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Weeping Ship, sentence 8

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“It is surest to ride thither along the shore.”

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**What happens:** be, ride · **To what, where:** shore · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Weeping Ship. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66819:33:8
# text = “It is surest to ride thither along the shore.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	expl	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	surest	sure	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	ride	ride	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	csubj	_	_
7	thither	thither	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
8	along	along	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	shore	shore	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | present |  |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **ride** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  |  |  | the shore |  | thither *property* | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent along shore=Trajectory |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 66819 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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- ← previous: [sentence 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/33/7/)
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